The invention relates generally to communication systems and more particularly to a method and apparatus for generic frame relay services support in communication systems.
Communications networks are evolving rapidly, and network designers are constantly challenged to improve the efficiency, speed, and overall performance of their networks. As such, developers are continuously implementing new communication switches, or nodes, with additional functional capabilities. In order to accurately manage communication networks that include a plurality of nodes, the network manager must understand the functional characteristics of each of the nodes within the network. In prior art systems, such characteristics were typically communicated to the network manager by providing the identity or node-type of the various nodes included in the network to the network manager.
The information communicated to the network manager in prior art systems typically did not include all the functional capabilities that a specific node might possess. It was up to the network manager to determine the functional characteristics for a node based on its node-type or identity. For example, each node of node type X was known to support certain functional characteristics, and the network manager included a reference (often hard-coded in operational software) to node type X that was referenced to determine the functional characteristics of any nodes in the network of node type X. Thus, each time a new node configuration was designed and implemented, the device performing the network management in the communication system would also have to be revised in order to include the functional characteristics for the newly developed nodes. In many cases this caused support of newly developed nodes to be delayed. This delay can be attributed to the time required to make the changes to the network manager, and possibly due to the desire to limit the number of revisions to a particular network management device. In addition to the time delays, revising the network manager adds a risk of interfering with or corrupting the current functionality of the network manager. Quality concerns such as these increase the costs associated with altering the network manager to support the new node technology.
In communications systems that support frame relay services, various nodes in the systems may have varying levels of support for various frame relay services. The support of these services may change for a particular node as subsequent node releases, or versions, are made available. As such, the network manager in the system must be updated to support the various nodes and their various versions. The number of different manufacturers of nodes that support frame relay services compounds the problem as the frame relay functional characteristics of each node available must be understood by the network manager to allow frame relay services to be supported in the network.
Therefore, a need exists for a method and apparatus for supporting frame relay services in a network in a generic manner such that revisions to the network manager are not required each time a new node or new release of an existing node type is developed.